Horror
The Pop-Up Camp
I collect fishhooks whenever I find them. I string them like a beautiful curtain between two trees. There are many ways out of my camp. You can run one way and get the hooks. You can jump out into the reservoir and swim away. Some people try to go back the way they came in, back on the old hiker’s trail. The reservoir is huge now that the dams don’t work. It’s deep in the middle and rocky at the edges. Diving is a real bad idea, but it’s an idea that comes to people when they’re in a hurry. The old hiker’s trail is all safe, that’s the way I come and go, but please don’t tell anybody.
By Matt Keating5 years ago in Fiction
The Harvest's Words
Downtowns smelled like a wet dog whenever it rained. And that made the bars smell like kill-shelters. They were the best shopping places for a while, if you could stand the scent. Saturday nights at Bad Dad’s, that was my spot. I’d seen enough TV before the plague to know that I couldn’t shop every week, or even every month. I spaced it out to twelve or thirteen times a year. I made my stores last.
By Matt Keating5 years ago in Fiction
A Golden Warning
"stare deeply" The acrid stench of rotting teeth and stale alcohol made my eyes water as the old woman's husky voice breathed over me. A single candle flame flickered on the table between us, the light catching the glint of gold before me as the pendulum swung back and forth. I kept my eyes fixated, flicking them from from left to right, following the hypnotizing swing and let my mind wander until thoughts evaded me and the room around me slipped away and new images flooded my conscious.
By Snarky Witch5 years ago in Fiction
The Heirloom
1996 Marty held the small locket in his stiff fingers, watching the way the light reflected on the colorful enamel. He opened the clasp, his eyes watering as he saw the photo still inside – it seemed a lifetime ago, that young, eager looking man in his air force uniform smiling up at him. She’d kept it all this time – tucked in her drawer alongside the letters he’d sent her. Their whole wartime romance reduced to a small bundle tied up in blue ribbon. It was too sad.
By Angel Whelan5 years ago in Fiction
Gray Skies
After the bombs went off, our lives got turned upside down, and things we had known all of our lives suddenly became uncertainties. I was barely eight years old when the bombs went off, and now I’m nearly double that. They weren’t nukes, or so the Government told us — not that you should trust those liars to start with. It’s easier to say what they weren’t, rather than what they were, because truthfully, we’re still not entirely sure what they were. I mean, they were your typical dummy bombs that massive planes dropped from high in the gray sky — isn’t it strange how I remember the weather conditions that fateful day? At first, nothing really happened, except some buildings being destroyed from the impacts, but nothing major, like explosions or anything like that. We woke up the next morning, and everything was still mostly the same. Of course, the Government was in a sheer panic, but that was also typical of any Friday morning, truthfully. A week or two went by, three, four, and still nothing really looked out of place.
By Alton Modlin5 years ago in Fiction
Shiver
Startled, I heard something weeping in the distance. I never expected to hear crying as a frightening sound, but this was downright creepy. My heart began pounding quickly, I began to sweat. Petrified, I was afraid to move as the crying continued. Blinking a couple of times, trying to clear my head, it seemed chilling to me that something was sobbing like that over and over.
By Deborah Walker5 years ago in Fiction
Searching for Iris
January 18th, 1937 My name is Saul Randolph. My dear friend, Edgar Trafton, at last has succumbed to the Human Circulatory turovirus -or as it is better known, the “Red Death.” He had come to my residence so that we might take shelter together from this vicious plague, infamous for its tendency to mutate and adapt. Over the last two years the Red Death had managed to rapidly decimate the global population, inspiring riots and panic as the death toll climbed.
By Kevin Gard5 years ago in Fiction
The Last Song
Static crackled from an old dusty radio. It whistled and whined briefly, then a female voice could be heard - “refugees escaping the blockade of Paris…” static again. *Click* the radio cut out. He thumped it, releasing a plume of yellow dust. The ancient armoire below it creaked in protest.
By Yivgeni Matoussov5 years ago in Fiction
Mission Florida
I had again arrived at the beautifully haunted paradise that is Florida. The last time I was in this beautiful state, a ghost literally chased me away, though later out we did sort out our differences ( It was found out later that the ghost, a young girl, had feelings for me. I don’t know why but ghosts seem to have a penchant for the likes of me). So I had no problem coming here.
By Syed Arabi Khalique5 years ago in Fiction
